Wednesday, January 16, 2013

1 month report

Ellie turned 1 month yesterday. I can't believe we are at the 4 week mark!

We are learning more about each other each day. I can't wait until she starts laughing and playing. Right now she smiles on occasion, like a real smile..not a gas smile. It's the sweetest smile ever (I'm sure every parent says that). She likes this mirror that I bought her. It's bright colors with zebra print trim. She will stare at that for about 15 to 20 mins which I think is good for a newborn. She follows things for just a second and I have this book called white on black. Its a black book with white shapes, like a bottle or bird, she likes that too. I'm trying to read/or tell her a story every day and let her listen to music at least an hour a day instead of the TV. She's going to have a very diverse music knowledge. We go from Beyonce to Beach Boys to the Mamas and the Papas to The Beatles to Aretha Franklin.

There is this one song that I went through a span of listening to every single morning on the way to work and singing at the top of my lungs. It's Selena's, I could fall in love, I swear to you it calms her down. I don't know if she can recognize it from the womb or it's just a coincidence but one day she was screaming I would turn the song on and she would shut up! I tried to get it on tape but I suck at video recording, all I got was her being quite while it was on. It's probably all in my head but I think she remembers.

Since this weekend we've reverted back to our crying games. Poor thing. It's definitely gas related. She wakes up in the middle of a nap screaming and then falls back to sleep. Last night, she pooted, burped and sneezed at the same time, it was impressive. It scared her so much you would have thought we were torturing her. I'm sure it hurt a little too.

She stays hopped up on mylicon, mylanta or gripe water. We have a system down. It's mylicon for most occasions, if she's spitting up a good bit we give her the mylanta instead because it's suppose to coat her stomach and esophagus (we use this as a second choice because it has less mylicon in it, then just giving mylicon) and then at night before bed if she's really fussy we give her gripe water. It seems to calm her down a good bit. All of this is as needed, of course. I try not to give her too much. I don't know why it bothers me but it really disturbs me to have her take so much medicine but as my mother says, you want her to feel good not be in pain and if I have something that helps, I should use it.

I've been reading and apparently this fussiness is very common and usually peaks at 6 weeks. I sure hope hers does. The other night Jay asked me when I thought she would stop all of this crying stuff, I said, I don't know but I hope so soon. Then I was thinking, dude you are only dealing with it like 6 hours a day now, you don't even know the half of it and I'm pretty sure we are getting some kind of payback from when he was a baby! There are so many parents out there on blogs who are just as frustrated as we/I am. I take comfort in knowing that I'm not alone. You can hear the desperation in their blogs or posts. I feel their pain. It's so damn irritating and frustrating and then you get mad at yourself for being so irritated because she can't help it. It's a vicious cycle. It'll get better though, I know it will. At least she's not as bad as what they say Jay was like. That's a blessing.

She's eating about 25 to 30 ozs a day now. I think that's a lot for her age but she acts like we are starving her. Damn, formula is expensive! I think we are wasting a lot too. I've got to start watching what we are wasting.

She also is outgrowing the smallest of her clothes :( It's too soon. She's very long so the onesies with the footies are the ones that are getting the closest to being put up.

That's all I've got right now. Here's a picture of her yesterday. She was pretty grumpy so I didn't get many good shots. She always does the best when there is no flash!